Project Summary
AN ARUP-CARDNO JOINT VENTURE UTILISED 12D SOFTWARE FOR ITS WORK ON DETAILED
DESIGN FOR PORTION C OF THE WOOLGOOLGA TO BALLINA PACIFIC HIGHWAY UPGRADE. THE
SOFTWARE PROVED AN ASSET AND TIME SAVER FOR THE DESIGN TEAM.
The Challenge
The Woolgoolga to Ballina project (W2B) is an immense undertaking that involves
a 155- kilometre upgrade of New South Wales’ Pacific Highway to dual
carriageway, along with major grade separated interchanges and upgrades of
existing roads. The Australian and NSW governments are jointly funding the $4.36
billion Woolgoolga to Ballina Pacific Highway upgrade. Roads and Maritime
Services Pacific Highway Project Office and Pacific Complete (joint venture
between Laing O’Rourke and WSP) are working together to deliver the project. Due
to the sheer scope of the project, Pacific Complete separated the extensive
design process and construction work into a number of portions. The brief called
digital engineering processes to be incorporated during detailed design as part
of Roads and Maritime Services initiative to use building information modelling
(BIM) technologies. This was to provide the capability to create and manage the
delivery of the project effectively and streamline future maintenance of the
asset. An Arup-Cardno Joint Venture (ACJV) won the detailed design contract for
the section between Devils Pulpit and Richmond River, Broadwater in November
2015. This work package involved a 35-kilometre realignment and upgrade
including grade-separated interchanges to provide access to the Woodburn and
Broadwater townships from the highway. Niall Brady, Senior Engineer – Transport
& Resources at Arup, worked on the project and explains that its design
challenges required a unique solution from the get-go.
The Solution
The design of the highway included accurate 3D models of all pavement layers,
earthworks, kerbs, line marking and safety barriers, divided into 100-metre
intervals to facilitate integration with Pacific Complete systems
(quantification, 4D etc.) The naming – or tagging – of all elements within the
model and drawings also had to align with the Pacific Complete Integration
naming protocols. Likewise, the drainage elements required a 3D model for all
pipes, headwall, culverts, basins and drainage channels, all of which required
their own tag. “The brief was quite complex in that every element had to be
named using these protocols – every signpost, barrier – every aspect had to have
its own individual tag,” says Mr Brady. He explains that one of the benefits of
such comprehensive tagging included allowing the asset owner to individually
identify elements that would require maintenance, such as safety barriers,
during operation. Pacific Complete’s naming protocol for design elements
contained more than 100 components that needed to be tagged and subdivided into
location, direction, family and number. The ACJV would eventually have nearly
100 staff working on the project at its height, so the sheer scale of the
undertaking was always a challenge, but Mr Brady says the design team had to
approach the project unlike any other highway project because of the
complexities of the modelling, tagging design elements and dividing the
alignment into 100-metre sections. “Before we started the project, we had to see
how we could deliver on these stringent requirements,” says Mr Brady. Pacific
Complete did not mandate the software to use, so in order to address this
challenge, the ACJV team needed to find the right software to provide a
comprehensive solution. Mr Brady was responsible for completing a review of the
available software for implementing the digital engineering aspects on the
project. The aim was to identify the most efficient process to complete the
project’s BIM requirements, while also catering for cross collaboration between
different disciplines. Given its latest developments with 3D mesh surfaces
(known as trimeshes), use of snippets (coding tools) to standardise naming, and
workflow tools – or chains – to help streamline processes, 12d Solutions’ design
software was selected for the civil aspects of the project. The design team was
responsible for developing the customised snippets and chains to create the BIM
models for the highway and drainage elements, as well as applying unique
attributes to each element and the correct naming conventions. To ensure the
project met its design briefs, predominantly adhering to the BIM naming
protocols set out in the brief, Mr Brady developed a 12d Project Plan. “The
alignment was divided into individual 12d projects with strict naming convention
for models and strings to ensure clean collaboration between sections and
disciplines and consistent naming for BIM tagging,” he explains. Mr Brady says
the software’s user-friendly design meant it saved hours of time, cost and
effort for the overall design team. “We had up to 15 12d users working on the
project who all came with different experience and it was easy for them to pick
up the software and run with it,” he says. “The road alignment and drainage
elements could be done in 12d and then shared in other discipline’s models,
which meant we could do clash detection very easily – it was all very dynamic.”
He says the BIM models were exported from the 12d model consisting of 3D mesh
surfaces saved with Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) files. This industry
standard format allowed the BIM models to be imported into Autodesk Navisworks
along with the structural bridge and culvert models, to check for said clashes
between design elements and existing utilities. Mr Brady says this approach
allowed the design models of all portions, from different design software, to be
collaborated and reviewed in one 3D space. To undertake the process of labelling
and scheduling all kerbs, barriers, line marking and water quality basins, the
team developed chains using 12d Model software to automatically tag these
elements in the design plans. The schedules were then outputted to Excel with
little manual input from the team. He says the ability to create macros within
12d allowed the team to then import the tags from the Excel schedule to AutoCAD
to display the tags on all the drawings. Not only did this process ensure
consistency but it helped to remove human error in AutoCAD labelling the
elements.
The Result
Mr Brady surmises that the ability to control the naming and to set up standard
snippets using 12d software meant it was a real asset to the project. As a
result of its successful use of 12d Model software on the W2B project, the ACJV
was awarded the 2016 Customisation Award at the 2016 12d International
Innovation Awards. "It was very new what we were doing with BIM in 12d, but it
showed just how the software helped deliver the project and the benefits that it
brought to the design team.”
--As featured in Roads and Civil Works Magazine, April/May2017, and
roadsonline.com.au
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